Glorious For Its Brevity
by Kaj-Nrig
Summary: Mako doesn't survive the day of the colossus. They remember him, in the aftermath. (Spoilers for the series finale.)
1. The After

A brief A/N:

I disliked Mako, and part of me would have preferred he died during the finale. At the same time, I would have liked to like him. This is an attempt to understand him through those around him. Will hopefully be told in five or six parts, written over the course of a couple weeks. Unbeta-ed, very rough.

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><p>Glorious For Its Brevity<br>by Kaj-Nrig

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><p>Bolin carries him out of the machine on his shoulder the way he would a sack of sweet yams and lays him down on the first remotely smooth surface he sees. Bolin pounds at his chest for a long time in a bid to get his heart pumping again. It doesn't work.<p>

Tenzin and his family are the first to stumble upon the two; Jinora decides to stay behind with Bolin while the others search for Korra and Kuvira nearer the newly opened spirit portal. The young girl tries at first to help him, but he slaps her hand away. "Don't touch him!" he yells. "I need to—I need to—" His voice trembles with desperation.

"He's gone," she says as gently as she can, and the words choke her on the way out. She reaches for him again, this time placing her hand on his shoulder, and though he doesn't react to it, he doesn't push her away again, either. She repeats herself until he finally, slowly, stops beating Mako's still chest and lets her pull him into a sitting position.

"I'm so sorry, Bolin," she whispers. His response is to grasp at her until she wraps her arms around him, and the two of them clutch each other urgently. He cries into her shoulder for Mako, and she does the same for him.

They mourn together for what must be an eternity, yet when they pull apart their hearts are no less heavy. "What happened to Korra?" he asks, if only to break the silence. Jinora informs him of Korra's continued absence.

He needs to help search. But he won't leave Mako here. He can't. He carries Mako to the spirit portal by himself, and refuses help from anyone; not even from Asami, who breaks into tears of her own upon the sight of her once lover resting limp in his arms.

The last of Team Avatar to find out is Korra, who stumbles out of the spirit portal with Kuvira in tow. He hates seeing Korra's smile disappear as she approaches him. He hates disappointing her. Still, he accepts her hug without a word, and then the Avatar, after some extremely careful consideration, steps aside.

Kuvira looks at him as if seeing him for the first time. He looks back and wants nothing more than to crush her face between two slabs of stone. He didn't expect to see her here, or at all for that matter. Her presence is like a knife, twisting and writhing in his heart.

He could do it. He could, and he would not let anyone stop him. Kuvira's troops are too far away, and nobody stands between him and her.

Bolin seldom hears from his voice of reason. The thing is timid, and shy, and easily shouted over by his baser impulses. But this time it stands firm, and it speaks calmly to him in a voice that always looks out for little brother, that protects Bo from making rash decisions. "Let her go," it tells him. "Let the world deal with her, and let's work on patching you up, okay?"

"Okay," he concedes after a time. "Okay."

He resettles Mako's weight in his arms and turns around. Chief Beifong and Suyin are waiting with shackles. When they pass each other, Chief Beifong glances at Mako, and her face hardens into something dangerous.

The next person he comes across is Tenzin. "I need your help," he tells the elderly monk, who simply nods in understanding and leads him away.


	2. Tenzin

A/N: Rating bumped up for some talk of funerary preparations. Warning.

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><p>Glorious For Its Brevity<br>by Kaj-Nrig

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><p>Tenzin<p>

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><p>In the early morning hours the day after the battle, Tenzin orders an Earth Empire medical officer named Mo Zhu to bury four clay urns at the base of a tree outside Republic City. Inside the urns are Mako's liver, heart, brain, and a kidney. In death, we must give back to those that nourished us in life, Tenzin explains to the soldier as he sets up a prayer station.<p>

Tenzin conscripted the soldier last night to prepare Mako's body after it became apparent that no surgeons or morticians remained in Republic City. Air nomad teachings forbid him from touching human remains directly, otherwise he would have done the deed himself. It displeases him to know that Earth Empire hands have played any part in Mako's funeral, though he tries to console himself with the knowledge that these hands are doing their best to undo what was done. Mo Zhu worked through the night to prepare Mako's body, and his work has been nothing but humble, efficient, and respecting. And he was not responsible for Mako's death.

And yet, Tenzin cannot displace the malice lingering inside him.

Mo Zhu packs the dirt down until only the very lips of the vessels protrude from the ground. A thin paper seal has been affixed to the openings with wax to contain the odor. Tenzin finalizes the makeshift altar – fresh fruits on the left, a candle on the right, and a paper bowl filled with uncooked rice in the middle in front of a framed picture of Mako – and retrieves the packet of yellow and red incense sticks from a tote bag. He offers the packet to Mo Zhu.

"It is tradition for the undertaker to offer a prayer at this point."

Mo Zhu looks ill at ease. His eyes turn to the proffered incense sticks, then to Mako's portrait, then back to Tenzin. "A-are you sure?" he asks.

Tenzin takes in a deep breath. He has never been more uncertain.

"The great monks teach me to break free from my worldly ties in order to reach enlightenment. To let go of my love, and my pain, and my hatred." This he says with a pointed glance at the soldier. "If... If I could have my way, you and your leader and all who stood with her would be in the spirit world, forced to wander the wilds for eternity for what happened today. But then, if I could have my way, Mako would still be alive. He was like a son to me, just as Avatar Korra could be my daughter. I see the sorrow and anger on the faces of everyone who knew him, and it fills me with a fury that threatens to overwhelm me."

Mo Zhu says nothing. A chill wind floats by, and the first rays of the dawn warm Tenzin's scalp. He sighs, feeling all the aches of the battle yesterday creaking in his bones. "Do you know this is not an Air nomad practice? We practice sky burials. In our temples, built atop the tallest mountains, we take our dead to sacred plateaus and offer them to the humming vultures. Once they have stripped the flesh from the deceased—"

"Sir?"

"My point is, we must respect the dead in a manner which befits them. You did a good job tonight. The circumstances under which you and I cooperate are hardly ideal, but they rarely are. Do not let them keep you from honoring a fellow soldier."

Mo Zhu tarries a while longer, but eventually nods and pulls several sticks from the packet and lights them on the candle flame. He kneels before the altar and bows deeply several times, then sits quietly with the incense slowly turning to ash in his hands, before kowtowing one final time and jabbing the sticks into the rice.

Tenzin watches all this in silence, and as he does, he feels... not peace, not yet, but something approaching it. It's enough that when Mo Zhu rises, he can offer the young man a smile that feels sincere.

"You must be tired. Take this to my temple, and my wife will set you up with a room to rest in."

"Thank you, sir." Mo Zhu takes the proffered tablet, a wood carving of the Bodhisattva Vasudhara. "Um..." he mutters.

"Yes?"

"I... I'm sorry. For your loss. I'm sorry things ended this way."

It's not enough. It will never be enough to undo what has been done. But it is a start.

Tenzin bows, and the young man leaves.


	3. Lin

Glorious For Its Brevity  
>by Kaj-Nrig<p>

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><p>Lin<p>

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><p>As chief of police, Lin attends every funeral of every officer lost in the line of duty. Most, she admits, are strangers to her; these officers performed their duties adequately but immemorably, and her attendance is just a formality. She gets up when the moment passes to her, she commends the officer for a lifetime of service, and she goes about the rest of her day.<p>

Lin is not without empathy. She has simply felt it whittled down over the years until nothing remains but tiny shards, so she keeps these closely guarded.

Because there are officers like Mako, and they deserve what's left in her.

She finds Tenzin in the forest outside the city, right where Pema said he would be. She catches him just as he is about to dismantle the altar. "Tenzin," she calls out, and he pauses long enough for her to close the distance.

"Lin," he responds, clearly surprised. "I didn't expect to see you. How are things in the city?"

"Busy," she says as she goes to her knees and reaches for the pack of incense sticks stashed next to the altar. "Kuvira's army are barely half pulled out of the city. Most of them stopped fighting after they heard her surrender order on the broadcast, but she had some of these idiots wound tight. We had to march her out to personally talk them down, and even then some didn't listen."

"Were there any further casualties?"

Lin nearly flinches at the word 'further,' but she answers just as methodically as before, "No. If Kuvira couldn't knock sense into them, Korra was more than willing. That girl's been on the warpath."

"Can you blame her?" Tenzin asks. That's not something Tenzin would normally say. Not when Korra and warpaths are concerned.

"Can't say I can."

"I'm sorry I couldn't be there to help you all."

"Save it, Tenzin. You had more important things to do."

"Lin..."

"Sit down," she snaps before composing herself and repeating, more softly this time, "Come sit with me, Tenzin."

It's not like her to be this needy. Lin Beifong does not seek companionship, nor does she give it.

She can feel Tenzin's gaze on her. She hates the way he does that. She hates the feeling that he can see right through her. She hates that, despite her best efforts, she still craves it from time to time. Craves the way he makes her feel okay with her vulnerability.

He sits down, and the simple action washes away all of that hate, and now it's all about holding onto as much self-respect as she can.

"He reminded me of myself. You know what I mean: hot-headed, always serious, always about the job. There were times I'd come in expecting to be the first into the office and he would still be there from the night before, trying to hunt down clues for any and every case we still had open." She laughs. She did the same thing when working under her mother. Would he have turned out like her, adopted the mantle of Chief of Police of Republic City, given enough time? "I'd met my share of boys like him, but he... he seemed like he would last a while."

Tenzin nods in that sagely know-it-all way that Lin hates so much (but which she secretly likes about him), which is why it amuses her greatly when he says, "Because of Korra."

She shakes her head. "Because of that brother of his."

"Bolin?"

"Uh-huh. Don't get me wrong. Korra got him started on the right path, but keeping Bolin out of harm's way was always what motivated him to do the things he did."

Mako told her as much, she tells Tenzin. The night of his twenty-first birthday, she and he were the only ones at the station, and she offered him a bottle of shochu from her stash as a gift of sorts.

"I, uh... I don't like to drink much anymore," he told her bluntly.

"What, too many nights you can't remember as a kid?" She meant it as a joke, but the way his eyes clouded over told a bitter tale.

"Not exactly," he said, and he did a damn good job hiding the guilt in his voice. But she had been hiding guilt since before he was born; she knew where to look.

"Care to tell?" she offered casually, leaning back in her seat with the bottle in hand. When he hesitated, she shrugged and looked to the side. "This isn't an interrogation, Mako. Either answer the question or don't; it's all the same to me."

It wasn't all the same to her, of course. Getting to know her detectives was one of the most important things she did as police chief; figuring out who to throw on which case demanded an intimate knowledge of the ticks and nuances of each detective under her command. But Mako needed that security blanket of indifference. If she didn't care, then it would be just like talking to a wall, and walls couldn't whisper your secrets to other people.

He shuffled in the seat opposite the desk from her and eventually stammered out, "Back when I was younger, maybe... maybe fourteen or so, Bolin and I got into a scrap with some nobody street gang outside a bar in the slums. I forget how many them there were – maybe four? maybe five? - but I do remember the bar owner started taking bets on the fight, and when it was all said and done, me and Bolin somehow managed to send them all packing.

"The next thing I know, money's trading hands and some of it lands in our mitts along with some victory shots. The whole bar wanted to celebrate with us, like they had fought those guys with us or something. And I was into it. I thought it was the best night of my life. People kept handing me drinks and cheering me on and I kept having fun."

"And then..." she prompted.

Mako sighed. "And then I go outside for some fresh air. I haven't seen Bolin in a while. I have no idea where he is. I make my way to the alley to take a piss – I'd never been to a bar before, but I knew that that was where you went if you needed to pee – and I see someone getting beat up by a group of lowlifes about thirty years old. And... I don't mean 'beat up.' I mean 'getting the snot literally kicked out of him.' Apparently these guys had all bet on that gang and lost.

"One of them notices me, notices that I'm close to wasted, and he gets this grin on his face. He holds up a bottle of... I don't know what, but it has something still sloshing around in it, and he tells me, 'Hey kid. This one's yours if you come kick this dude's ass with us.' And I was feeling happy, and I was drunk, and I wanted more. So I said, 'Sure thing.'"

Mako didn't continue. She could figure out the next part of the story easily enough.

"Bet you could use a drink now." She poured him a half glass without waiting for an answer. He accepted the cup and downed the entire thing in one gulp.

"I told myself the day after that I would never drink again. And I hadn't until just now," he said, staring into the empty glass in his hands.

Lin downed hers in record time as well and poured them both another round without blinking as she said, "What's done is done, kid. There's no point beating yourself up over it now."

"Maybe," Mako conceded, though he didn't sound at all convinced. Lin couldn't blame him; she wouldn't have believed herself, either, had she been in his shoes.

"So then what? He bail on you?"

"I wish he had. Instead we both just wake up in a garbage dump the next day and I carry him to our bush in the park. I take care of him, he heals up, we hash it out, and he just accepts my apology."

She snorted. "Sounds just like that little snowflake to do something like that."

Mako burst into a fit of laughter. "That's not funny, chief."

Tenzin listens to the story without uttering a sound until she finishes. "And then?" he asks after.

"We kept drinking. What do you think we did?"

"What did he talk about?"

"Tch. His family. His godforsaken love life. I learned way more about Korra than I ever care to repeat, I'll tell you that much. More about his brother. Started really going in on him at one point, maybe. I dunno. By then I was barely even listening anymore. That kid had a laundry list a mile long, and he was determined to get through it all in one night. Scrub."

Tenzin hums quietly to himself. "Sounds like he had quite the complex assortment of feelings for his brother."

"Oh, please. He would have—He DID die for Bolin. All of that other stuff was just window dressing." The statement hangs in the air and stings like something whittled down into tiny shards and raked along her skin.

Tenzin whispers her name again, as if he knows something she doesn't. She's only talking about Mako, for the love of—

"Don't pity me, Tenzin," she orders harshly.

"I don't pity you," he responds calmly in return. "I envy you. You knew him well. Probably better than anyone else. And he trusted you enough to open up to you. Not many people can say that. Not even Korra."

Lin doesn't respond to that. Instead, she places her incense sticks, long since burned down to the handle, into the rice bowl and fetches some more. "And you?" she finally asks.

"Hm?"

When he looks curiously at her, she shrugs nonchalantly and explains, "Come on. We're having one of those... y'know... heart-to-heart things. So spit it out."

Whenever Tenzin sighs, he can mean any number of things. The handful of times Lin has seen him with his children, his sighs are usually borne of frustration. He sometimes sighs in front of his enemies when he knows he must once again break his pacifist vows. When he's happy, he might sigh something happy, and when he prays, his sigh becomes a song. This time, he sighs in a way only she and one other woman understand. It's his way of being vulnerable, and comfortable with it.

She can see through him, too, sometimes.

"I've just been thinking. About my kids, my family, and everyone who fought yesterday. We sacrificed so much for our victory, and Kuvira and her army lost so little in return. I should be happy that the damage was kept to a minimum, and I am, but... we fought to save this city and we can't even celebrate that because we're all too busy suffering.

"I can see the pain in Korra's eyes, in Asami's, Bolin's, my children. Jinora stayed with Bolin when the spirit portal opened. She's cried more in just the past day than she has her entire life. Opal doesn't know what's happened yet because she was knocked unconscious by that spirit weapon. I had to get help from the enemy to bury my son! My—If he were Jinora or Ikki or Meelo—" He shudders through his entire body and buries his face in his sleeve. A silent sob wracks its way through him, and another, and another.

For as often as he succumbs to his emotional outbursts, Tenzin is always just as quick to rebound from them and regain his composure. No doubt he has his airbender training to thank for that, though Lin has often wondered what he might be like if he didn't have to simultaneously uphold and betray the old ways. Whatever the case, his face reappears from the folds of his airbender robes within moments.

"If he were any of my children, I would have killed Kuvira the moment I saw her. And then I would have killed her troops. I would have chased down every single—"

"No, you wouldn't," Lin interrupts harshly. "We wouldn't have let you, Tenzin."

Tenzin looks at her skeptically before setting his hands on his knees and breathing in a deep breath. "I would have chased them down and made every one of them pay," he finishes quietly.

"Tenzin." He hates the Earth Empire right now, and he hates that he hates them. He hates his doctrine for teaching him to release his hatred, and he hates that he can't live up to it. "Tenzin," she repeats, and this time she covers the back of his hand with her own. The touch shocks him out of his haze; he looks sharply from their hands to her. For one sweet, painful moment, they're back in their youth again. But the moment passes, and all Lin can do is give him a comforting squeeze.

"Go see your wife," she says firmly, and doesn't let go until he nods.

Lin pokes her second batch of sticks into the bowl to finish burning away, gets up and dusts herself off, and waits for Tenzin to gather the unlit incense and picture into his bag. They return to Republic City together, whereupon she bids him farewell. Break time is over; there's work to do, and the city needs its chief of police.

Korra's still on her warpath. Lin sees no reason not to join.


End file.
